


it's about time that you just unwind

by fuckener



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Hand Jobs, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 10:00:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20833601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckener/pseuds/fuckener
Summary: “It sucked to tell people,” Richie said suddenly, tapping a finger on his glass. He was avoiding eye contact again. “Like - it just really fucking sucked. I’m old. I’m like middle-aged. You’re this old and youjuststart telling people you're gay, they think, ‘Jesus! That dude’s got issues.’ Because they’re right, and you do.”“It must have come as a real shock to our friends,” Eddie said, staring. “That you have issues.”





	it's about time that you just unwind

Eddie found out while he was procrastinating at work by putting himself through a video of Richie’s new set.

“How’d everyone enjoy the holidays?” Richie asked the crowd, which responded with some of the hollering expected.

He was doing his comedian posture, elbow on the mic stand and hand dangling off of it carelessly, like he wasn’t slowly forming huge sweat patches under his arms. Eddie’s acute secondhand embarrassment always made watching Richie’s stand-up hellish, but there was something else about it that he struggled with, something about the way Richie looked to him onstage, not completely like himself - with a spotlight on him he would adjust his glasses too much and say things like _‘jeez’_ after cracking jokes.

“Yeah? Mine was weird, guys, I’m not going to lie. I came up with this really good idea on how to cause total chaos at a family event, you wanna hear it?” There it was - glasses adjustment, not even past the one minute mark. “If you really want to shake up another dull as fuck Thanksgiving with your parents, just wait ‘til you’re in your forties and your elderly father is spooning out his first helping of mashed potatoes for the night and then drop the bomb that you’ve been gay the whole time. _Boom_, happy Thanksgiving. Pass the sweet corn, I want to fuck the huge green dude on the can.” People laughed. Richie did that thing with his face between a smile and a scowl. “It’s the long game, yeah, but -”

Eddie slammed his laptop shut.

He sat and stared at the same spot on his desk until Bill called and knocked him out of it.

-

Richie found him waiting around after the show.

“Eddie?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “The fuck are you doing here?”

Eddie was in New York for the night after making a series of rash decisions he wasn’t going to admit to, the worst of which being how much money he’d ended up shelling out to some asshole on Facebook for a last minute ticket to Richie’s show.

In the middle of his set Richie had spotted him, stared for a second, and then said, “Shit, I forgot what I was talking about. I don’t normally do the whole insult your audience members bit, but it was that guy’s fault, right there.”

He’d pointed directly at Eddie and made people boo him.

“Getting heckled by your fucking fans,” Eddie answered.

“You could have told me you were coming. It was pretty jarring, seeing you down there.” Richie looked around and grabbed Eddie’s arm. “Let’s get out of here before anyone tries to talk to me. I need a drink.”

Richie took him to a bar and ordered them both whiskeys, because he was a dick and he knew Eddie that couldn’t drink it without making uncontrollably ridiculous faces. They found a cramped, sticky little table to sit at.

The minute they’d sat down Eddie stopped trying to figure out how to broach the subject and point-blank asked, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

Richie’s eyebrows shot down. “What are you talking about?”

“What do you _think_ I’m talking about?”

Richie screwed his face up like he wasn’t taking this seriously, but the way he shifted in his seat was telling. “What, does it change things? Are you about to smack me over the head with a bible, Eds?”

“No. Shut up.” Eddie shook his head. “I shouldn’t have to find this shit out with your twelve-year-old YouTube fanbase.”

Richie knocked back a mouthful of whiskey, groaning. “God, what difference does it make?”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference if you hadn’t told everybody else first,” Eddie said.

He had to raise his voice - the shitty music in here was getting louder. He hated that it genuinely hurt him to find out the way he had, that he had to randomly stumble over the information on his own after everything they’d gone through. That he had to find out last: Bill already knew because all of the other Losers had been told this information directly, and hadn’t only found out because they had a Google alert system set up for ‘Tozier.’

Richie’s eyes flicked away, fixed on something off to the side.

“I come out of the closet and you make it about you?” He shook his head, tutting. “Insensitive, man. Not cool.”

Eddie said, “Richie.”

A muscle in Richie’s jaw jumped. He sniffed and then he picked up his drink and downed the rest of it.

“They all called.” He shrugged. “Just to ask how I was doing, how the tour was going, so I just - told them. Ripped off the bandaid. Well, ripped it off four times but, yeah.”

He shrugged again, like that was it.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Eddie asked.

Richie jerked to look at him. “Why didn’t _you_ call _me_?”

In the months since they’d left Derry, communication between the two of them had progressively tapered off. These days they were limited to the odd text and maybe a voice recording from Richie of an impression he was working on that Eddie would then give his honest opinion of, which would, of course, result in an argument.

They hadn’t called each other in all that time because they just hadn’t. Eddie spoke to Bill on a regular basis and spoke to the others on a semi-regular one. Bev was how he got most of his updates on the general state of Richie’s life, so he knew the two of them had been keeping up with each other. He’d thought about picking up his phone and doing it a few times, maybe, but talking to Richie was different than talking to the others was. It always had been.

Richie’s mouth twitched. “Man. Did you come all the way here just to chew me out? Hell hath no fury like a grown-ass man acting like a little bitch, I guess.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, fuck you,” Eddie bitched.

There was a lull in the conversation. He didn’t know what to say because the reasoning for him being here sounded fucking ridiculous out loud, but it was accurate, and if he tried to deny it Richie would know and the whole thing would only get more ridiculous.

“It sucked to tell people,” Richie said suddenly, tapping a finger on his glass. He was avoiding eye contact again. “Like - it just really fucking sucked. I’m old. I’m like middle-aged. You’re this old and you _just_ start telling people you're gay, they think, ‘Jesus! That dude’s got issues.’ Because they’re right, and you do.”

“It must have come as a real shock to our friends,” Eddie said, staring. “That you have issues.”

“Well, I always did come off as the well-adjusted one,” Richie deadpanned.

“Comedians are known for that, right?”

Richie side-eyed him. He nodded slowly. “I get it. If it was the other way around, I’d be kinda mad. I’d probably just be mad in the form of an angry text, but yeah, okay.” He sighed, scratched at his stubble. “I dunno, it’s a weird thing. If I’d called you up out of the blue one day and said ‘hey, man, I know you’re busy working the world’s saddest job, but listen, I’m attracted to guys’ - what do you even say to that? ”

Eddie had an intense gut response to Richie saying _I’m attracted to guys_.

He ignored it, clearing his throat. “I’d say, ‘hey, Trashmouth, tell me something I don’t know.'”

Richie cracked a smile and said, appreciatively, “Yeah, right. Nice. Clearly you should have been the fucking comedian.”

Even though he knew it was the wrong thing to say as it was falling out of his mouth, Eddie couldn’t help asking, “Did your parents really take it that badly?”

If there even was a proper time and place for them to have this conversation, this was not it. There was an inexplicable framed photograph of Ice Cube hanging over the bar and too many people, too much noise for them to have a serious conversation. Not to mention that having serious conversations was a thing that they actively tried to avoid doing with each other in general.

Richie looked at him for a minute, mouth hanging open. Before Eddie could apologize and take it back, he squinted, mouth pressed to one side.

“I mean, yeah. Pretty badly. They’re not happy about it but they’re not, like, Republicans or anything. I had to embellish the story for my set because it was mostly just fucking awkward and a bummer.”

The idea of having that conversation with his own mother made Eddie feel abruptly, physically sick. He picked at the coaster under his drink and tried to swallow the feeling down, but it stayed in his throat, jutting against his Adam’s apple. He took a sip of the whiskey he didn’t want.

“Jesus, Rich, that’s...” He didn’t know how to finish that thought. He could picture how the conversation must have went in his head with aching clarity: Richie would have said it to them like it was a joke and his parents wouldn’t have laughed because they were ancient and begrudgingly grandchildless.

He reached over the table and squeezed Richie’s wrist.

“You don’t -” Richie said, surprised. “It’s okay, Eds.”

Hesitantly, he put a hand over Eddie’s. He glanced up, their eyes catching for half a second, and then pulled it away again, turning to face the bar.

He moved the arm Eddie was still holding. “You can, uh.”

Eddie pulled back, flustered, raising his hands in front of him. “Right.”

He waited on Richie to make a lame joke, to snort and say something stupid like, _wow, I didn’t know _you_ were gay, man_, but he didn’t say anything. He fumbled inside his jacket pocket for his wallet and then pulled out two bills and shoved them on the table between them.

“I’m fucking starving.” He gestured his head at the practically untouched whiskey in front of Eddie. “C’mon, finish your drink and we’ll go.”

“Richie, I’m not fucking drinking that.”

“Yeah, you are. I paid for it. Look.” He tapped the crumpled bills. “I’m even tipping for it. We’re in Downtown Manhattan, this shit is expensive. It’s going inside of you.”

“Fuck no.” Eddie slid the glass across the table. “_You _drink it.”

“I got it for you,” Richie said, pointing. He raised his eyebrows. “I mean, I thought it was a nice gesture, but fuck me, right?”

Goddamnit. Eddie grit his teeth. “You’re the worst.”

He picked up the glass, fully intending to throw it all back in one out of sheer spite. It tasted like literal fucking fire and after about half a second in he regretted his decision immensely and wanted to spit it all out, but it was already in the process of happening. It wasn’t like he could just _stop_.

He cracked an eye open. Richie grinned back at him with real, obnoxious enthusiasm. Eddie glared, tipped his head back, and let it burn its way down his throat.

When he finished he slammed the glass down on the table and choked on a brief coughing fit.

“God fucking _damnit_,” he rasped.

Richie reached over and patted him on the shoulder, still grinning. “You good?”

“No, I’m not good, you asshole. Jesus _Christ_, how the hell do you drink that?”

“You’re supposed to sip it,” Richie told him gleefully.

-

They walked a couple of blocks to some tacky diner Richie wanted to go to. As they were cutting through the streets and navigating tourists with no sense of spatial awareness, Eddie kept noticing that Richie just _looked_ like he fit into the city. He’d clearly done this New York a few times; Eddie had been here on two business trips, and between both had seen almost nothing beyond the crappy obstructed view of the city skyline from hotel windows and the bleak insides of conference halls.

“You eaten already?” Richie asked him after they’d gotten there, holding the door open. The neon pink signage bounced off of his glasses.

Eddie ducked in, shrugging. “I could go something.”

And he could have, if he’d trusted the look of anything on the menu. Richie immediately ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and Eddie glanced at baked goods display, saw the words ‘gluten free' in front of a muffin and pointed, then was disappointed the minute it was on a plate in front of him and he could see that it was stuffed with raisins - not because he was allergic to them, just because he fucking hated them.

“Oh, Eddie,” Richie said through a mouthful of cheese, faux-sympathetic, smug. “It must be rough.”

He took another unnecessarily huge bite, his eyes rolling back as he chewed. If they weren’t in public Eddie would have hit him.

“It _is_ rough, asshole,” he said. “You think I don’t want to eat grilled fucking cheese? Of course I do. Look at that. It looks like shit and it still looks amazing. Fuck me.”

Richie wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and offered his grilled cheese out in the other. Eddie stared at it, considering, and hesitated.

“Come on, one bite won’t kill you.” Richie offered it out further. “What’s life without a little dairy?”

It was harder to deny himself the food that he liked, even if it did not like him, when it was being wagged around right in front of his face. He grabbed it out of Richie’s hand, paused, and took a bite.

“God.” Eddie shut his eyes, savouring. “Fuck.”

“Yu_p_,” Richie said.

Even though there was barely anything left Eddie couldn’t help having a little more.

“Hey, _hey_, that’s enough now,” Richie admonished, reaching across the vinyl table and snatching it back. “I’ve barely fuckin’ eaten today and I’m like a foot taller than you, I need the sustenance. Go on. Have some shitty muffin.”

Eddie did not want to have any of his shitty muffin, especially not after he’d just tasted white bread and cheese for the first time in years.

He sipped his water while Richie wolfed the rest of his meal in one bite and then chased it down by slurping on a vanilla milkshake the size of Eddie’s head.

“Is this how you eat when you’re touring?” Eddie asked, trying to sound like that did not deeply concern him.

Richie made a big show of rolling his eyes. “Are you about to start with me?”

Eddie just frowned at him. Richie sighed, putting the milkshake down with a thud.

“I live in LA, okay?” he said. “I eat quinoa. I juice spinach. Cut me a fuckin’ break.”

He’d talked about living in LA during the set about coming out that Eddie had eventually finished watching in gradual increments: _I can talk about that shit here. If you’re in LA and you’re not a _little_ gay then move to the fucking Midwest. Get out. You are not welcome. I’m doing a show in Jacksonville in a couple of weeks, and people do not know who the fuck I am in Jacksonville, so I’m going to have to come up with totally new homophobe-friendly material. It’s either all the stuff about being gay gets cut, or I do._

Eddie had to turn it off again after that. It had made him feel sick the rest of the night. He hadn’t talked about being gay at the show tonight either, and Eddie wondered how he decided where to use that material, if he knew before going onstage or if he decided after getting up there and looking out at the crowd of people who’d come to be impressed.

What if he misjudged it? Who was looking out for Richie while he was darting around from place to asshole-infested place? Did someone on his team know how to reign him in, how to keep him out of trouble?

“I worry,” Eddie admitted.

“Yeah, well, I don’t need to be mothered,” Richie said - which he didn’t, but that didn’t mean it was easy to quell the urge. Eddie knew what was coming next on the subject of _mothering_, and when Richie was done with the last dregs of his milkshake he asked, as expected, “How long is Myra letting you off the leash for, anyway?”

Knowing the question was coming somehow didn’t stop Eddie floundering for an answer.

“That’s,” he said. “She and I aren’t technically...”

Richie blinked.

“... anymore,” he finished.

“You got _divorced_?” Richie exclaimed, louder than Eddie thought was really necessary. “You’re mad at me for not sharing my personal shit with you, and you got _divorced_?”

“Separated,” Eddie corrected. It felt like an important distinction. When the divorce proceedings were over with, when they’d finally settled and he no longer had to work overtime to make up for all the meetings with lawyers and extravagant legal fees, he would have more peace of mind than he had currently. He hoped. “And I haven’t told anyone about it, dickwad, you’re the first to know.”

Richie looked genuinely surprised, maybe even impressed. “Wow. I can’t believe you had the balls to do it.”

Eddie frowned. “Do what?”

“Leave your overbearing wife,” Richie said like it was obvious.

Eddie blinked at him, looked down at his food, chin to his chest, and mumbled something.

Richie’s face fell. “What was that?”

Eddie cleared his throat and mumbled again.

“She left _you_?” Richie repeated. He was openly gaping. “_She_ left _you_? Eddie, you’re kidding. Fucking... _Myra?_”

“This would be a great time for you to shut the fuck up, man,” Eddie told him, miserably picking the raisins out of his muffin.

“Yeah, I _bet_.” Richie shook his head, wide-eyed, like his brain would not process this information. “I’m sorry, I’m gonna need a play-by-play of just how the hell that happened. I thought she was fucking obsessed with you, the way your -”

Richie actually did shut the fuck up then, but Eddie had already figured out the unfortunate direction that sentence had been headed in.

Richie cleared his throat and rubbed at the back of his neck.

“Uh,” he said, by way of apology.

“It probably had something to do with how I came home from my ‘_business trip_’ in Maine with two new orifices in my body.” Eddie prodded at the raised lump on the inside of his cheek with his tongue where Bowers had stuck him. “I mean, if I had to guess.”

“Oh, she wasn’t into that, huh?” Richie muttered, because he was incapable of not being a jackass at every opportunity.

It wasn’t exactly the wounds Eddie came home with that did it, or even how he failed to explain them every time she asked him just what the fuck had happened. If he really had to pin the break-up on something it would be that he couldn’t stand being suffocated by her while his near-fatal injuries healed, and she, in turn, couldn’t stand _not_ being allowed to suffocate him. In fact, it made her downright vengeful.

Richie looked down at the crumbs on his plate. “I’m, uh. Sorry.”

“No, you’re not. Shut up.”

Richie rolled his eyes and shrugged. “You know what I mean, dick. You pay alimony, she gets the surgically enhanced boobs you always wished she had when you were married, you move into a sad condo, blah blah blah. I’ve seen movies, I know the drill.”

Eddie didn’t feel sad exactly, but he felt something. Displaced, like he didn’t know what the fuck he was really doing anymore. He’d felt like that since before the break-up, since almost dying and waking up in a hospital bed with Richie asleep in the chair beside him looking like such complete shit it wasn’t even funny, his arms crossed, mouth open and producing copious amounts of drool.

After being discharged and leaving Derry again, he’d went back to the life he’d left behind, but he hadn’t been able to make himself fit back into it. He hadn’t wanted to make himself small anymore.

“It’s a nice condo,” Eddie said. He picked an inoffensive segment of muffin out and ate it, then he said around it, with his middle finger raised an inch from Richie’s face, “_Fuck_ you.”

Richie batted his hand away, snickering.

“If the next girl you date is another carbonite copy of your mom, I’m rounding up the Losers and we’re staging an intervention.” He looked up at Eddie, grinning. “Do you get it? Carbonite? Like -”

“Yeah, like Star Wars, ha fucking ha.” Eddie resigned himself to the fact the muffin was not good and wiped across at his mouth with a paper napkin. “I wouldn’t worry. I don’t see a lot of romantic interest in my future.”

Richie frowned. “What’s that mean?”

“It means I’m literally disfigured,” Eddie said, flatly.

Richie blinked, frowning deeper. “You’re - what, your cheek? Come on, that’s not even _bad_, man. Girls like shit like that. They’ll think you’re dangerous and edgy. All you gotta do is not ruin the illusion by, you know, opening your mouth.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Disfigured, _pfft_.”

It probably wasn’t that bad, objectively, and all things considered it sure as hell could have been worse. Eddie saw people staring sometimes while he was waiting in line for coffee or washing his hands in the men’s room, little moments he used to pass through unseen but that now made him preemptively self-conscious, like he was under every stranger’s observation. It was a deep line indenting the side of his face, still new and a little violently pink - people were going to look.

“And it’ll keep healing,” Richie added. “I remember the doctor saying that. In a couple years you probably won’t even know it’s there.”

“It’s not just that,” Eddie said, pointedly looking down at himself.

Richie followed his eyes, realization dawning, and then he drummed his fingers on the table and intoned, “Oh. Right.” He nodded solemnly. “You mean what happened to your dick.”

Eddie shut his eyes.

“Can you lay off,” he said, “for _one _fucking second?”

“Don’t you have a secret six-pack under there? Yeah, that’s right, I heard about that. Mike saw the doctor bandage you up one time. We all lost our shit.” Richie picked up a raisin from his plate and threw it at him. “Who gives a fuck about a scar? You’re being neurotic.”

“I don’t have - I have to do yoga, for my fibromyalgia,” Eddie explained, flustered. “And it’s not a scar, it’s a fucking mess.”

“Oh, _boo_.” Richie threw more raisins at him; Eddie ducked and felt twelve again. “You’re acting like you’re the fucking Elephant Man. Like you’re Quasi-fucking-modo. You look fine. If I had a six-pack and a big-ass scar, I would not give a shit about the latter because the only thing in my life I’d give a shit about would be my own abs.”

This was easily the weirdest way Richie had ever managed to annoy him.

“Okay, I get it.” Eddie’s face burned. “Stop. It’s fine. I’d rather I have this, than...”

He couldn’t look at Richie when he thought about it. It was branded, searingly, into his mind’s eye - Richie’s white eyes, his bloody nose, his body dying as it was lifted from the ground. It hadn’t been him. There had been no Richie for a full moment, just this poor thing floating in the air that used to have him inside of it.

“I shouldn’t even be complaining,” Eddie said, honestly mad at himself.

“Hey, you’re allowed to hate that it happened,” Richie told him. “I hate that it happened.”

They looked at each other. Richie had a new grease stain on the front of his shirt and Eddie was overwhelmed for a minute by how thankful he was that they were sitting across from each other under these fluorescent lights, eating this terrible food.

How had he even existed for twenty-seven years without remembering Richie? How had he idly watched clips of Richie Tozier telling bad jokes without realizing he was looking at his favourite person in the world? This was why he’d never called - Eddie knew if they spoke to each other from a thousand miles apart, even for a minute, he wouldn’t want to hang up.

“I don’t hate that it happened.” Eddie shook his head. “It had to.”

Richie looked at him. He took a long drink of Eddie’s water.

“Just for the record, as a person who is specifically well-equipped to tell you this,” he said after a moment, shifting, “you don’t have anything to worry about. You’re, you know. You’re a good-looking guy.”

He had such an awkward time saying it that Eddie knew he sincerely thought it was true.

Richie made a face. “Was that weird?”

It kind of was, but Eddie still immediately said, “No.” And then after a pause, “It’s just weird when there’s no punchline.”

Richie muttered something that sounded like, “Oh, there’s a punchline.” Then he slapped his hands on the table, a bad drum solo, and craned his neck to look at the waitress across the diner. “I’m gonna get a coffee, you want a coffee? Wait, you don’t do caffeine after 3PM, do you.” He gestured for the waitress to come over in a way Eddie did not find socially acceptable. “Decaf?”

It was almost midnight. Eddie’s flight home was tomorrow afternoon and the thought of it steadily approaching filled him with a miserable sort of dread. He didn’t know when they would see each other again. He never did.

He shrugged and said, “Screw it.”

Richie gave him a crooked smile. “Eddie, you loose canon.”

Over milky coffee Richie demonstrated a few of the impressions he’d been refining since Eddie had laid into them - admittedly the Tucker Carlson one was sounding better, but Eddie still fucking hated it - and told him about the tour, and then somehow got Eddie to confess to hating his shitty anxiety-inducing job.

“Quit,” Richie told him, looking him dead in the eye. “For real. Fuck that place. Fuck fucking Delaware, man, get out. You’re a free agent now, you can move somewhere that doesn’t blow. Work some other desk job.”

Eddie had thought about this on a daily basis.

“Yeah. Yeah.” He looked into his coffee and found himself glazing over in thought.

He shook his head and said, grimly, “Richie, I’m going to be making alimony payments for the rest of my life.”

Richie’s eyes went wide - then his mouth curled up at the sides and he snorted, and after he’d done that he just burst out laughing.

Eddie kicked at him under the table. “The _fuck! _You shithead!”

“I’m sorry,” Richie said, biting his bottom lip, unable to stop smiling. “Sorry. That’s not funny. It’s really funny how incredibly not-funny that is.”

Eddie kind of knew what he meant but he didn’t fucking like it.

“I can’t believe you sometimes,” he muttered into his coffee.

Richie’s smile faded, the look in his eyes abruptly shifting. He leaned in. “You’re not, like, struggling, are you?”

Right. Eddie put his coffee down and sat up straight.

“This is actually my limit,” he told him. He raised a hand to indicate where that was. “Jokes about my divorce and my job are one thing, but you’ve met Adam Sandler, you fucking sell-out, you’re not allowed to make jokes about how much money I make.”

“No, I’m not...” Richie picked up his spoon and stirred at his cold half-finished coffee. “I’m really asking. If you ever needed anything, I’m - you know.”

He made a vague, meaningful gesture.

Eddie blinked. “Oh.” Then, “Pay my wife alimony.”

Richie flashed sarcastic smile and said, “_Ha_.”

They left the diner just before 1AM when they both seemed to wordlessly agree that they’d had their fill of listening to the oldies.

As they stood outside, rubbing their hands together in the cold air, two guys walked past. One of them openly gawked at Richie as they went and then he turned to his friend and said, just within hearing distance, “Wow, that was crazy. John Oliver.”

“Yeah,” Richie said when Eddie turned to grin at him. “You’re gonna tell everyone about that one, aren’t you.”

Eddie didn’t want to go back to his hotel room for the night. Even though he was tired of being in the middle of the city and being surrounded by so many other people he wanted to keep this going for as long as he could. How often would they get chances to see each other like this? He felt awake, felt like he was in a better state than he’d been in since they’d all split ways in Derry a few months ago.

Richie’s tour had been pretty non-stop though; if he wanted them to say their goodbyes and leave it here for tonight, Eddie would get it.

“Listen, my hotel’s only like twenty minutes from here,” Richie said. He cleared his throat, jerked his shoulders. “I won’t lie. It’s pretty swanky. For any other city it would be a shithole, but for New York, it’s like, _wow_.” He looked at Eddie. “Do you maybe wanna come hang out for a while or something?”

The coffee was making Eddie giddy. “Yeah, that sounds - yeah.”

-

It was obnoxious how nice Richie’s hotel was in comparison to his.

“So you just live like this,” Eddie said after the light was flicked on and he was confronted by a living room where he expected a bed.

“Pretty fucked up, right.” Richie kicked his shoes off at the door. “And I bet you didn’t even laugh once during the show.”

“I would’ve laughed if you’d said something funny.”

Richie patted him on the shoulder as he walked past. “Yeah, well, I’m glad you came anyway.”

He went over to one of the sofas and dropped bodily down onto it with his arms pinned to his sides. Eddie stood at the door at looked at him, momentarily an observer instead of a guest: Richie, a paisley heap in the middle of a characterless room his manager’s assistant had probably booked him into. It struck him that this was how Richie lived, sometimes for months on end, and he didn’t like it.

Richie peered over his shoulder. “You good?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Sit down.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, asshole,” Eddie said, and went to sit on the sofa across from the one he was draped over.

Richie’s legs hung off the edge from the knee down because no two-seater in the world was long enough to contain him. His face was squashed against the cushions, glasses sitting crookedly, and he looked at Eddie over the frames, just off his eyes. The coffee table between them had a note stuck to it: details for Richie’s flight out on the Sunday in his scribbly, barely legible writing.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

It was so much quieter here than it had been in the bar or the diner or walking around the city. No music, no other voices, nothing in the background. There was only the muffled traffic from outside of the window, barely there, and the anxious sound Eddie’s teeth made when they clicked together.

“I’m not thinking anything,” he lied.

“You’re full of shit. You just told me you think my stand-up sucks dick, but you won’t -”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know. Don’t lie to me.”

Richie moved to sit up straight. He looked at Eddie, unblinking, his hair sticking up at a dumb angle, and waited.

“I just didn’t imagine touring would be so...”

“What?”

“Lonely,” Eddie said, hating it.

Richie immediately looked ready to argue but before he could say anything Eddie threw up his hands and reminded him, “You _asked_.”

If Richie was alone for too long he’d get sad. That had always been true, ever since they were kids and he’d get grounded during the summer break and come back afterwards a little different, a little more withdrawn. His asshole manager didn’t count as company - Eddie knew that Richie thought he was good at his job but dogshit as far as being a human being was concerned. The audience didn’t count. Sending the Losers impressions of John Malkovich at three in the morning didn’t count.

Eddie knew this next part was ridiculous but he still shook his head at Richie with genuine disapproval and said, “You should have called, Rich.”

“_I _should have - how long have you been divorced?” Eddie went to correct him and Richie corrected himself, shiteatingly, “_Separated. _How long have you been alone for, Eddie?”

“It’s different.”

“How?”

Eddie didn’t know how to explain it right. Why the fuck _hadn’t_ he just called? Now they were together it seemed so stupid that he’d imagined Richie’s life operating entirely differently when they were apart. He’d worried that the life that Richie had shaped for himself over the last 27 years didn’t have the same space for him in it, that he might want more of Richie’s time than Richie was willing to give him now. He hadn’t known he should have been worrying that the same empty spaces existed in both of their lives.

“Because it’s you,” Eddie said.

Richie looked at him like he wasn’t understanding. “Because it’s me.”

How could he say it without saying it?

“You require constant fucking attention.”

It was enough of an answer to get Richie to back off. He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, head thumping against the back of the sofa, and muttered, “You’re one to talk.”

Eddie couldn’t really defend himself against that. “Fuck you.”

“Good one.”

Richie sat slumped in his seat and stared up at the chandelier light hanging above them.

“I did call you,” he said after a moment.

“You - what?” Eddie frowned. “When?”

Richie shrugged. “A few days after we left Derry.”

They’d left town on the same morning, after Eddie spent two months in the hospital and Richie spent two months on Mike’s couch waiting for him to get discharged. The other Losers had apologetically returned to their jobs or their wives or left to file for their own cathartic divorces - and continued to constantly check in on him regardless of what state they were in, anyway - but Richie had stayed behind and visited him every day, without fail.

He’d even had to cancel some charity event he was scheduled to do. He’d sat in Eddie’s hospital room as it was happening, his feet kicked up on an empty chair, and performed dramatic readings of the Twitter abuse he was getting for being a no-show. Eddie had felt guilty for keeping him there for so long, for never telling him to go, but he couldn’t imagine what that hospital stay would have been like if Richie wasn’t visiting day after day, even when Eddie was too tired to do much but lie there, even when Eddie asked him just to stay in the room and keep talking to him while he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

They’d said goodbye to each other in the airport the day after Eddie was discharged, on their way to different terminals. Richie had told him to look after himself and hugged him, kissed his temple, left, and before Eddie knew it he was sitting on a plane that felt like it was heading in the wrong direction, staring straight ahead and compulsively twisting the ring on his finger.

“Your wife answered,” Richie said.

Eddie had known it was coming but it still landed like a weight in his stomach.

“She was...” Richie pulled a face. “It was kind of exactly like when you broke your arm and your mom told us all to fuck off.”

“That sounds about right.”

“It was eerie, actually.”

Eddie didn’t really want to get into all that right now, or ever. He looked down, lips pressed tightly together.

“I told her about how you, you know. Looked out for me when I was in the hospital.” That wasn’t enough to cover it, but nothing Eddie could say was. “She didn’t take it well.”

“Yeah?” Richie raised his eyebrows. “Good.”

The way Richie had taken care of him was different than what he was used to. He hadn’t gotten any joy out of helping Eddie get up to piss, hadn’t taken the opportunity to self-aggrandize about being the one to do it. There was a fundamental trust there, a sense of respect that other people hadn’t treated him with when he’d needed them to.

Eddie’s chest felt tight. “I never really thanked you for doing all that.”

“Yeah, you did. Constantly.” Richie gave him that look he only did sometimes, entirely earnest, no trace of irony. “You never had to, Eds.”

They were they sitting so far away from each other, Eddie realised. They never used to have to talk with this much space between them when they were kids, before they’d learned to bite down the natural desire to be close to each other, before Eddie had started to get that uneasy feeling in his gut like there was something wrong with it.

He wished they’d gotten that unselfconsciousness back along with their memories, that closeness, but it didn’t work like that. Twenty-seven years apart was too long to know where you stood, even with Richie. Especially with Richie.

“I just need you to know it means a lot to me,” Eddie told him.

Richie didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at him. Then he lowered his head and scrubbed a hand roughly through his hair.

“Eddie, listen.” The tone of his voice was strange. “I have to tell you something.”

Eddie was instantly anxious. “Are you dying?”

“What? _No_.” Richie shook his head, eyes bugging out, thrown. “I’m fine, it’s nothing like that. Jesus, Eddie.”

Eddie was still anxious. “Are you getting married?”

“Am I - what the fuck?” Richie looked around the room in disbelief like someone else was there to witness how absurd the things Eddie was saying apparently were. “No. _No_. Can you shut up and let me talk?”

“Okay,” Eddie said, eyeing him.

Richie took his glasses off and wiped them on his shirt, blew out a long breath, and then he put them back on and said, “Shit.”

He took another minute. Looking at him, Eddie wanted to give him an out, to say that whatever it was, Richie didn’t need to tell him - if it scared Rich, it scared him too.

“When you were in the hospital,” Richie started, his voice low, “those first few days, when we didn’t know if you would -” He shut his eyes. “It was fucking terrible. Looking at you like that. I know I shouldn’t say this to you, I asked the others not to, but that whole week, I was...”

Nobody had to tell Eddie that Richie had been a mess that first week. Eddie remembered exactly how Richie had looked sitting at his bedside, barely even himself, remembered the shiny-eyed way Richie had looked at him in those last few brief moments of lucidness down in the sewers, the way he’d caressed Eddie’s face.

“I know, Rich,” he said quietly.

Richie’s mouth twisted into a smile. “You know. Of course you know.”

He nodded, looking down at his hands.

“I decided that if you woke up, and you were alright, I was going to tell you that I...”

Richie met Eddie’s eyes and looked at him the way he only ever did when there was a chance one of them was about to die.

“I was going to tell you that I love you.” He didn’t look away. “I don’t - I don’t remember ever not being in love with you.”

“Oh,” Eddie said, heart pounding.

“And I get that you don’t feel - and that’s fine.” Richie put his hands up. “I just had to say it to you, once.”

“You think that I, I don’t...” Eddie muttered, unbidden.

He couldn’t put the words together, didn’t think his throat would let him spit them out if he tried - the idea that Richie loved him was making its slow way through him, travelling along his nerves, under his skin, trying to settle.

Eddie swallowed. “Richie.”

“I’ve fucked things up, haven’t I,” Richie said, trying for a joke, but the scared look on his face spoiled the delivery.

Eddie shook his head. “Richie.”

“This was a dumb idea.” Richie gripped his thighs. “We were having a good - where are you going?”

Eddie was on his feet. He wasn’t even thinking. He stood there for a moment, then he went around the coffee table and sat beside Richie on the other sofa.

Richie stared, frozen. “What are you...”

Eddie didn’t want to overthink this, to lose his nerve. He leaned towards Richie, closer and closer, until their noses were an inch from touching, and then Richie jerked back with a start.

His eyes were magnified and huge. “Eddie, you don’t.”

Eddie’s heart was going so fast, beating so thickly that Richie should have been able to feel the vibrations of it in the air around them.

“Are you an idiot? Of course I do.” He grabbed Richie’s hand and squeezed his fingers too hard. “I love you, Rich. Of course I fucking love you.”

Richie’s throat worked. He stared.

“This really isn’t how I was expecting this conversation to go.” He looked down at where Eddie’s hand was clutching his, mouth parted. “I thought you’d let me down gently and be really sad and awkward about it. Maybe try to hug me or something. I had this whole lie prepared about the nonexistent guy I’m seeing.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Eddie said, honestly.

“I tried.” Richie’s fingers twitched in his. “I really tried to get over you.”

Eddie knew what that was like. Over the past few months he’d kept thinking back to the airport, kept returning to the spot where he’d stood and watched Richie’s retreating back, remembering how the soft scrape of Richie’s stubble had lingered on his skin where he’d kissed his head. He would find himself back in that moment over and over again, looking on as Richie disappeared into a crowd of strangers and went back to the life in LA that Eddie was not a part of. He would feel the same urge as he had then, like something in his chest was desperately trying to unfold, and keep doing his best to stifle it.

Even when he hadn’t known who Richie was, he’d still had that feeling curled up inside of him - a part of himself that wanted to be given away.

Eddie softened his hold. “I don’t think it’s the kind of thing you get over.”

“It probably didn’t help that I never really wanted to go through with it. I mean, why the fuck would I want to get over you?” It was a serious question that sounded like a joke because that was the only way Richie was capable of saying some things. “You almost died trying to save me from a horrifying monster and you never laugh at a fucking thing I say. You ruined me for anyone else. I can’t believe I’m still talking.”

Eddie found it comforting that Richie was scared too.

“How the fuck did you manage to keep this to yourself for so long?” he asked. It came out soft, no bite. 

Richie’s hand, a limp weight until this point, curled tightly around his own. He reached up hesitantly and cupped Eddie’s cheek with his other hand, his thumb gently skimming along the line of his scar.

He frowned. “I have no idea.”

Eddie couldn’t fucking take it anymore, was about to fucking explode just looking at Richie’s mouth. He shot forward and kissed Richie so hard he hit the back of the sofa with a sharp inhale.

After a second his hand slid to the back of Eddie’s neck, fingernails digging into the base of his scalp, and Eddie felt the touch go all the way through him in a rush.

He pulled away to look at Richie - his slightly askew glasses, the shine on his lip, the stunned look on his face. He felt like he had to see him then to have proof of what just happened, and there it was.

Richie blinked at him and leaned forward, their mouths catching again, that easy. Eddie swept his tongue uncertainly across Richie’s bottom lip and Richie muttered, “Oh my fucking god.”

It was Richie’s mouth on his, his hand in Eddie’s hair, his glasses pressing into Eddie’s cheek. He’d let go of Eddie’s hand and had his palm flat against the small of his back, an insistent pressure trying to pull him closer, if they could get any closer than this.

“At least your mouth is good for something,” Eddie said into the kiss.

Richie made a sound of agreement and pressed Eddie back to lie across the sofa cushions, crawling over him. They were too big for it, too old for this. Richie was barely even letting him breath. He tasted like the burnt coffee from the diner and Eddie could not physically get enough of him - grappled at his hair, his back, his shoulders, his ass, felt the rumble in Richie’s chest when he groaned.

He didn’t need it to go anywhere further than this, as long as they didn’t stop. They could just keep kissing, keep trying to feel each other up through their clothes, and Eddie wouldn’t have cared - but then Richie pressed up against him, his hip against Eddie’s erection, and shuddered, full-bodied.

“I can feel how hard you are, Eds,” Richie said, breath hot on Eddie’s neck. “Oh, fuck.”

Eddie felt himself flushing. He could feel Richie too, pressed against the line where his thigh met his hip, the heat of him through their clothes. He rocked his hips up in a slow, thorough movement, and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Richie,” he breathed.

Richie groaned and bit into the side of his neck and Eddie felt it sharply, his hips canting, uncontrollable.

He reached down to undo the button on Eddie’s jeans, slipping his hand into the narrow gap, and then his palm was pressing against Eddie through his boxers. Eddie couldn’t help grinding into the friction, trying to muffle the sounds he was making into Richie’s shoulder.

“Is this okay?” Richie asked, kneading.

Eddie couldn’t think straight, couldn’t think about anything except from Richie’s hand against his dick, Richie’s body on his, Richie’s teeth dragging across his throat. He was done with waiting; he wanted Richie to make him come like this, wrapped around each other like clumsy teenagers.

He nodded insistently, reaching between them to help things along and pull the zip on his jeans all the way down. Richie reached through the slit in his boxers to touch him, nothing between them then, just the heat of his skin, and Eddie fisted both hands in his hair. He pulled Eddie out through the slit, into the cool air.

“Let me just,” Richie said, and he licked his hand.

“Have you done this before?” Eddie asked, breathlessly. There was a thirty year gap that still needed filling in, intimate details about Richie’s past that he wanted to know but never thought he had the right to ask about. Somehow the question felt more appropriate when Richie was grabbing his dick.

Richie’s answer came out in a rush. “A long time ago. I’m pretty sure I told the guy I was straight as I was jacking him off.”

His hand started moving. Eddie’s hips snapped up immediately and he gasped, winded.

“Have you?” Richie asked, lower. He was looking down as he asked it, watching Eddie fuck the tight pressure of his fist, mouth parted, and Eddie had to shut his eyes to keep from embarrassing himself.

He shook his head. “No. I wanted to, though.”

Richie squeezed and Eddie made a strangled sound. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. With you.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Richie said, and kissed him.

He didn’t stop kissing him until Eddie’s was jerking helplessly against him, until Eddie was moaning into his mouth, back arched, and coming so hard he could feel his fingers clawing into Richie’s shoulders.

“Fuck.” Richie hadn’t let him go. His hips kept twitching, tremors still running through him. His stomach was damp. “Fuck.”

“Eddie.” Richie took one of Eddie’s hands and pressed it to the erection straining against the fabric of his jeans. “Eds, can you -”

“Yes,” Eddie said, unzipping him.

“Cool, that’s -” Eddie did what Richie had done and licked across his hand. “Jesus.”

Eddie wanted it too much to be nervous. He never thought he’d have sex without feeling anxiety coiled in his gut, never thought he’d get to touch someone he really wanted like this.

He curled his hand around Richie, tugging gently, and watched Richie tip his head back and moan his name. His chest stuttered. Eddie slipped his other hand up his shirt to feel it.

Richie shook his head, licking across his bottom lip. “This is going to be over so fucking quickly, it’s not even funny.”

Eddie was still getting used to the feel of Richie in his hand - he was so hard that Eddie couldn’t think about anything else for a moment except that Richie wanted him _this_ much, was actually aching with it. He drew his thumb along the head and Richie gripped him by the wrist, shuddering, and said for some reason, “Please.”

“Anything.” Eddie didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. He didn’t care. He leaned up to press his face into the curve of Richie’s neck and kissed his Adam’s apple.

“You feel really good, Rich.” 

“I love you,” Richie said, panting, his hips working frantically. “Oh, fuck, oh _fucking_ fuck -”

Eddie stroked him through it, his lips pressed to the pulse point fluttering in his neck, and then Richie was coming in his hand, across his stomach, gasping.

He dropped his head limply onto Eddie’s shoulder. The tension flooded out of him slowly, and then Eddie was lying under the full weight of his body and couldn’t even pretend it bothered him.

“Wow,” Richie said. “You just jerked me off.”

Eddie rubbed his back. “I know.”

Richie groaned and buried his face in his neck. “I can’t believe I said ‘I love you’ right before I came.”

Eddie couldn’t admit that he thought that had been sweet. He turned his head towards Richie’s and kissed him, just because he could. Richie made a surprised, pleased sound and kissed him back. He reached for his waist, paused.

“Oh, shit.” He pulled back and looked down at Eddie’s shirt. His glasses were completely crooked on his face, sliding down his nose. “That’s a lot of...”

Eddie picked at a dry patch of his shirt, the fabric sticking to the skin of his stomach unpleasantly. Having Richie’s come on him was no longer hot. It was becoming less hot and more disgusting by the second.

Richie’s eyes flicked briefly to his chest. “I can get you something else to wear.”

The immediacy of the offer made Eddie soften. He shook his head and, after a moment’s hesitation, reached up to pull his shirt off from over his head. He wiped what was left on his stomach with it and dropped it on the floor. 

“Can you not litter my very expensive hotel suite with your jizzed-on clothes?” Richie asked.

“Can you not jizz all over my clothes?”

Richie shrugged. The way he was meeting Eddie’s eyes was deliberate, careful.

“It’s okay, Rich,” Eddie told him quietly. It was okay. It was Richie.

Richie pressed his lips together, eyes flicking down.

Even for Eddie the scar was strange to look at. He still saw it as something separate from the rest of his body, a part of himself he didn’t fully recognise yet. It was gnarled and angry-looking, the skin around it raw, spread across the middle of his chest and back.

It looked better than it used to. And they were both here, alive, so what did anything else even matter?

Richie’s hand reached up tentatively to press against Eddie’s sternum, just above where the skin became pink and sensitive. Eddie covered it with his own, unthinking, their fingers threading and fitting together with ease. Under Richie’s palm his heart felt squeezed tight, ready to burst.

“Maybe it’s just because I know the context,” Richie said, “but - it’s kinda hot, honestly.”

“You would tell me that regardless of how fucked up it looked.”

“Well, yeah.” His thumb stroked over the bone. “It would still be true. It’s you.”

He glanced up at Eddie. Eddie stared at him for a moment, then yanked him down by the neck and kissed him. His legs moved on their own accord, winding around his waist and pulling him closer, closer, until all of Richie’s weight was on him and it felt crushing in a good, real way.

It was nice, aimless. Richie’s mouth travelled down his neck, one hand in Eddie’s hair and the other fondling his stomach muscles, and Eddie hummed, his eyes falling shut.

Richie stopped and raised his head. “Dude, are you falling asleep?”

“No.” Eddie didn’t open his eyes. “Keep going.”

Richie moved off of him, got up. Eddie reluctantly tried to follow his lead but had trouble sitting up properly. He felt boneless.

Richie looked down at his watch. “Yeah, it was your bedtime like seven hours ago.”

He took Eddie’s hand and helped him up to his feet, and then he kept holding it as he led Eddie into the bedroom. There was enough light coming through the curtains that Eddie could make the room out. The bed was unmade and ridiculously big and Richie’s suitcase was on the floor in front of it, wide open, spilling out wires and clothes.

“I’m prepared to physically fight you for the left side,” Richie told him as he pulled off his shirt.

Eddie was too tired to do anything but kick off his jeans and his underwear and crawl onto the mattress. “Next time.”

Richie stopped fumbling with his belt.

“Next time,” he agreed.

The minute Richie was beside him on the bed Eddie felt oddly awake again. He turned onto his side. Richie was lying facing him. He opened his eyes at the sound of Eddie moving around, and then they lay there for a while, looking at each other, everything masked in blue light.

“Can you see me?” Eddie asked.

“No. You’re just a blob.”

After a moment Richie reached out and touched Eddie’s face. He stroked across his cheek, thumb following the line of the scar there.

“Yeah, that’s you all right,” he said, softly.

Eddie loved him.

He shuffled closer. “Turn around.” 

“What?”

“Turn around, move. And what the fuck, take off your socks, you’re in bed.”

Richie turned onto his other side and did as he was told, muttering. “God, I knew you’d be a high-maintenance sleeper.”

Eddie moved closer until there was nothing between them and curled himself over Richie’s back. He tangled his legs with Richie’s ridiculously long ones, sliding his arms around him.

“Thanks,” he said, his mouth on the side of Richie’s neck. Richie shivered.

Eddie waited for one of them to make a joke but it never came. He closed his eyes. For all the talking they did he didn’t think they could say anything to each other that would match the physicality of this, bare skin against skin, his thumb tracing Richie’s hipbone. The feel of their matched breathing, of Richie’s heartbeat against his chest.

“You’re here until Sunday, right?” Eddie asked. He spoke quietly but here, like this, everything sounded louder. “I could... I could stay.”

Richie grabbed the hand on his hip and lifted it to kiss Eddie’s knuckles.

“This might sound forward, but hear me out.” He stroked the back of Eddie’s hand with his thumb. “I think you should move to LA.”

In the last two hours Eddie had already thought about that too. He hadn’t expected them to attempt a conversation about it because it was four in the morning and it was objectively ridiculous - one fucking night together, and he was considering packing up his entire life to be with Richie.

“It’s just something to think about, maybe,” Richie added at Eddie’s silence.

Eddie pressed his mouth to the flat of Richie’s shoulder blade and thought about it.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think so, too.”


End file.
